Walter E. Kurtz

Walter E. Kurtz (1926-1969) was a US Army Green Berets colonel who was known for his genius as a special forces commander and, later, for the cruel methods that he used during the Vietnam War. Kurtz went insane while commanding Montagnards in Cambodia, and he was worshipped as a demigod by the natives, making him power-hungry. He was assassinated in a special forces operation in 1969.

Biography
Walter E. Kurtz was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1922 to a family of German descent, and he graduated second in his class from West Point in 1946. That same year, he completed advanced infantry training at Fort Gordon in Georgia, and he was assigned to West Berlin, West Germany as a US Army lieutenant in 1947. In 1949, he gained a master's degree in history from Harvard University after writing The Philippines Insurrection: American Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia, 1898-1905, and he was assigned to the general staff in Seoul, South Korea in 1950. Kurtz served tours in the combat zone during the Korean War, and he returned to the USA to be trained in special forces after requesting a transfer to the Green Berets. Kurtz trained at Forts Holabird and Washington, and he married Janet Anderson on 14 June 1951 before returning to Korea for another tour, rising to the rank of Captain.

Vietnam War
Kurtz later graduated from the Army Airborne School and was sent to Vietnam by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1964 to compile a report on the failings of current military policies, and his report was so critical that only President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff could lay eyes upon it. Not long after, he was accepted for airborne training at Fort Benning, Georgia after three requests to transfer to the special forces, joining the special forces in 1966. Kurtz was involved with fortifying hamlets and a remote abandoned Cambodian temple, and he was sent to Cambodia to raise an army of Montagnards to fight against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army. MACV did not care about his brutal methods, which were successful, until photographs of the atrocities were released across the world. In 1967, Kurtz murdered four South Vietnamese intelligence agents whom he suspected of being double agents, and he refused orders to return to Da Nang, and he convinced Captain Richard Colby to work with him. For two years, Kurtz was worshipped as a god by the Montagnards, who carried out every request, no matter how ridiculous. In 1969, Benjamin L. Willard arrived at his village on a PT boat after being sent to terminate him "with extreme prejudice", and Kurtz held Willard prisoner in his village of brainwashed people. During a sacrificial ritual for a water buffalo, Willard snuck up on Kurtz and killed him with a machete, and Kurtz said, "The horror," before dying from his wounds.